In Memoriam

The Ends of Things

Greetings!

There are just a couple more days of school for us, and this time I really may not make it. It’s been a real slog since Christmas with constant sicknesses, colds, and never-ending coughs. This was the worst year academically for numerous kids, for various reasons. There were college visits. SAT prep. Angst. And next week, our first high school graduation.

But last week: a tragic infant death in a friend’s family.

Life is so fraught; it’s honestly a miracle we bother at all!

My mother was a French teacher before she had kids, and to this day her hobby is translating French poetry. She used to always recite one of her favorites, a simple one by Victor Hugo, until we memorized it. I only remember it in English.

I have been thinking about this poem recently and about what you do when the ground beneath your feet starts to give way.

When the Worst Thing That Can Happen Happens to You

The one natural resource that will never run dry are human tears, because sometimes the bough beneath your feet really does break.

Our longtime friends tragically lost their healthy 40-week gestation newborn the day before her due date last week. She was delivered stillborn and her funeral was last Friday. I was unable to attend, since it was across the country on short notice, but my sister and many friends were there. Over 200 people attended to support this family in their worst moment. The baby’s father carried her in her tiny casket into the church alone.

The baby’s cause of death was an extremely rare phenomenon called a “true knot” in the umbilical cord, which is just that—an actual knot in the cord. Apparently these things can form in the first trimester but can tighten up before labor. Knots are not usually detectable via ultrasound, either. They happen in .3-1.3% of births.

When it tightens, it stops blood and oxygen flow to the baby. When my friend woke up in the morning, she noticed that her normally wiggly baby was not moving. This was a thunderbolt straight from a nightmare to my sweet friend, who had to get the news while alone in her doctor’s office.

When you deliver a stillborn child, you are allowed to spend a day or so with the baby, cuddling it, letting your children see their sibling, and taking photos to commemorate her existence. That one day is all you ever get—it’s every birthday, every moment, every milestone, and every memory.

I remember seeing the grave of another friend’s baby who died in utero in similar circumstances and I was traumatized when I saw only one date on the baby’s gravestone: their birthday is their death day.

I remembered back to our near-miss with my oldest daughter, who was born with the cord wrapped tightly around her neck. When her head emerged, the doctor told me to stop pushing immediately and then said very calmly, “okay, the cord’s around her neck, hang on” and then he managed to cut it off her before it squeezed even tighter.

We got lucky. How long had the cord been around her neck? I try not to think of all the what-ifs.

My friend has a wonderful husband, friends, faith, and healthy children. She has to navigate this new existence, and no one can do this for her, although I fervently wish I could soothe her agony. It’s not about figuring out how to escape the abyss of pain you suddenly get dropped into with no warning. It’s about learning to survive and even thrive inside the abyss. The abyss becomes your new normal; but maybe over time it’s not so dark, maybe you plant some flowers, maybe you end up filling it with so much love that the abyss vanishes, or at least, you can learn to live with it and it no longer claims your every waking moment.

My friend was heroic enough to deliver an absolutely beautiful eulogy. She told me that she felt she owed it to her daughter to pull it off without breaking down.

And she was magnificent.

She said this at the funeral for her daughter:

“I know my baby is not lost. I will have to wait a little longer to see the color of her eyes, to know the sound of her voice, to press my lips into her cheeks and hair, but she is safe and am consoled that she is in the arms of One who loves her better than I ever could.”

It’s not every day we are called upon to act heroically. It’s awe-inspiring and profound to watch people you know act in such ways.

I sometimes think ahead to all the perils my own children may face in life. What if they’re crossing a street and a driver doesn’t stop? What if there’s a drunk driver who hits them head on? What if they are mugged? Assaulted? What if some disease or illness afflicts them? What if they face unexpected trials in life, or even the untimely death of one of their own children? How will I cope with seeing my child in pain, even in adulthood? What can I do?

The answer is nothing. All I can do is love the ones who are here, teach them what I can, and hope they have enough common sense to avoid the avoidable.

To anyone who has lost a child to miscarriage, stillbirth, or in infancy, I am praying for you. May their memory be a blessing to hold close in your heart forever.

Pray for us, Moira Rose!

Memorial Day

On Memorial Day last weekend, my husband and I visited the grave of a good friend who died in 2022 after a long battle with cancer. He was a Marine officer and a truly remarkable person. Our children are good friends with their ten amazing children. It’s still a shock that he is gone. His widow is a good friend who has taught us all how to be happy for his “good death” and even dare to be happy yourself after losing the father of your children.

Every day that someone I love is not diagnosed with a devastating disease or harmed in an accident is a good, even perfect day.

Pray for us, Jim!

Goodbye to My First Pancake

An era is drawing to a close in my house, but this one at least has a happy ending: my oldest child is graduating from high school. It’s supposed to be a moment of great pride and joy, and it is, but I am also devastated. Whatever his childhood was is now over. It is accomplished. It’s in the can. Cut and print. It’s closed forever to edits and additions, changes and adjustments. It was what it was. Too late to go back.

I sometimes lay in bed at night worrying about the extracurriculars I forgot to sign him up for, the enrichment I failed to do, the trips we didn’t take him on, letting him quit piano too young. Ah well!

Also, I keep trying to make sense of time. He was born literally last Tuesday. I was just feeding him in his high chair, watching Thomas the Tank Engine with him, bathing him. Where is my baby, and who is this overgrown muscle-bound adult man in my kitchen making protein shakes at all hours? HOW DID THIS HAPPEN.

Lucky for him, he is attending a college where he will be mercifully free from gender orcs and Hamas summer campers. He has a bright future; maybe I didn’t screw up too badly! Maybe I did okay with this kid, even though he had the misfortune to be my first pancake.

But he owes his very existence, ironically, to death. To the death of his older sister, in fact, who was never born and died in utero at 12 weeks old. We call her Honor, although I don’t know what gender she was. Maybe one day I will get to know! When I miscarried her, I wasn’t Catholic and it didn’t occur to me (and no one was there to tell me) to ask for her remains, so I could bury them suitably. I let her be removed and incinerated with the rest of the hospital waste, warts, tumors, and bloody gowns.

Four months after she died, I conceived my oldest child. If not for her death, there would be no him. What can you do when faced with this but shrug and be grateful?

His absence this fall will be acutely felt. He was our shepherd, getting us all to mass on time, locking up the house at night (because he’s the last one awake), taking the other kids to and from school every day. What will become of us with him living away from home?

More importantly: what will become of me? I am getting forced back on chauffeur duty since the next oldest doesn’t know how to drive. Back in the saddle, twice a day, for the dreaded school run.

Please send prayers.

En Fin

Stephen J. Thorn, 1854-1909.

After we visited our friend at the cemetery, I walked around and looked at all the oldest graves. So many old gravestones, some dating to the late 1800s. There is even a civil war section at this cemetery. Husbands next to wives, and in front, the stones for each of their children, grown and long dead. The sun on my face, the shade of the trees, and below my feet in the ground, people who were once just like me.

I will join them, much sooner than I would like. I hope it’s not for a very long time, I’m busy!

I think about the old joke: “The food here is terrible. And such small portions!” It’s about our existence. It’s mostly a slog. A ho-hum grind, punctuated by moments of exhilaration, soaring joy, and blackest despair.

But the biggest complaint people have, universally? That it all goes by too fast and ends much sooner than you want it to.

I try to remind myself every day that my worst day alive is preferable to being dead that day. A day with friends, not in acute pain, with cute children who hug me and tell me over and over how much they love me, is a pretty good day. I’ll take it over any other options.

I will try to remember to catalogue today’s relative calm and bank it for tomorrow, when things will inevitably go sideways and I will cherish the memory of a day when nothing too terrible happened.

Because you never know.

But you really should sing, knowing you have wings!

Thanks for reading,

—Peachy